Review: Hurwitz delivers exciting `Tell No Lies'

A race to stop a killer begins when a piece of mail is delivered to the wrong person in "Tell No Lies," the latest thriller from Gregg Hurwitz.

Daniel Brasher gave up a high-paying job to marry the woman of his dreams. She successfully battled a rare form of cancer and now works as a community organizer. They love each other and are happy together.

Then a piece of mail with no return address arrives in Daniel's inbox at work. It warns him to admit what he's done or he'll bleed for it. There's a deadline, but that deadline has passed. Daniel shows the letter to his wife. They search for the recipient's name on the Internet and discover that he's been murdered. Other pieces of mail with deadlines are delivered to Daniel's inbox. He must convince the police that the threats are real.

Hurwitz has a gift for creating characters and elaborate plots that start with something simple and then explode. In "Tell No Lies," the setting is San Francisco instead of his usual Los Angeles area, and he wraps the story in the landscape of the region, making the city a character as well.